Donald Miller's Blog, page 150

Jim Wallis Loves His Enemies

Perhaps one of the hardest things to do is to love your enemies, to love the people who attack you. And yet, when you look at the civil rights movement, or Ghandi's non-violent uprising in India, it's power is obvious. Recently, a talk-show host named Glenn Beck (I've never seen his show, so I am unfamilliar) began attacking churches that speak of justice, telling Christians to leave churches that are helping the poor under what Beck calls a Marxist platform. He is specifically attacking...

Turning Every-Day Actions into Spiritual Rituals

Interjecting from my post yesterday about rituals and commercialism, I wanted to expand on the idea of rituals as they relate to faith.

I do not believe there is specific, magical power in communion or church attendance, but I do believe communion is a way to interact with God (just as sharing a meal is a way to interact with friends) and that there is power in the meditative aspect of the act. That is, there is power in the interaction, the power to be influence by the person (or Deity) with ...

Commercialism and Faith Pt 3: Rituals and Evangelical Voodoo

This entry is Part 3 in a series called Commercialism and Faith. The series aims to make us more aware of why we think the way we think and behave the way we behave, giving us a perspective from which we can live a more enlightened life, free of the trappings of consumer addiction. In my last entry, I mentioned that this next entry would be about Christ as a product. But I thought I'd cover ritual first. I'll be getting to Christ as a product soon.

I want to focus for a moment on rituals and...

Commercialism and Faith: Rituals and Evangelical Voodoo

This entry is Part 3 in a series called Commercialism and Faith. The series aims to make us more aware of why we think the way we think and behave the way we behave, giving us a perspective from which we can live a more enlightened life, free of the trappings of consumer addiction. In my last entry, I mentioned that this next entry would be about Christ as a product. But I thought I'd cover ritual first. I'll be getting to Christ as a product soon.

I want to focus for a moment on rituals and...

Commercialism and Faith Pt 2: Paradise Lost

This is the second post in a series called Commercialism and Faith, in which I will explore the relationship between the language of our culture (commercialism) and how we view and relate to God.

Advertisers often play on something psychologists call Loss Aversion. Loss Aversion is an aspect of Prospect Theory, a theory that seeks to determine why people make certain decisions. Loss Aversion suggests people are more motivated to avoid losing something than they are to acquire something new...

Commercialism and Faith Pt 1: The Effect of Commercials on the Human Brain

This is the first post in a series called Commercialism and Faith, in which I will explore the relationship between the language of our culture (commercialism) and how we view and relate to God.

This series is not a knock against commercialism as much as it is an exploration of the effects of the cultural language on how we think about the world and specifically how we think about God. Commercials are
simply an exchange of information about the availability of products and services. The idea...

Commercialism and Faith Pt 1: The Affect of Commercials on the Human Brain

This is the first post in a series called Commercialism and Faith, in which I will explore the relationship between the language of our culture (commercialism) and how we view and relate to God.

This series is not a knock against commercialism as much as it is an exploration of the affects of the cultural language on how we think about the world and specifically how we think about God. Commercials are
simply an exchange of information about the availability of products and services. The idea...

New Blog, New Series

Thursday of this week this entire blog will change. It will have a new look, a new user interface, a resource center where you can get lectures (both video and audio) and more strategic content.

I will be launching the new blog with a series called Commercialism and Faith. Every few days I will drop a new entry, each building on the previous. In this series I'll be talking about the affects of advertising on your brain, and how standard, North-American Christian theology is more informed by...

Academy Award Picks

It was a pretty good year for movies considering there is no money in Hollywood. I think The Hurt Locker was the best movie of the year, followed by An Education. Jeff Bridges did a great job in Crazy Heart (and the music by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham was terrific) but overall I felt like that movie was creepy. Perhaps Jeff Bridges did too good of a job portraying a washed-up-drunk-country-singer turned babysitter. Up in the Air was too sad for me. I don't like traveling as much as I...

Update on 90-Second Short Film Contest

It seems people are having a hard time uploading their movies to the contest site. I removed some duplicates, and now only one film is working. If your film is not working, please remove it and try again. And forgive me for housing the contest on a site that doesn't seem to be doing what it was designed to do. If anybody out there works with Wildfire and can help, please let me know. I will keep you posted on how things develop.

Don